Delegate proposes bill criminalizing revenge porn – MyEasternShoreMD

“For Jeanne Yeager, executive director for the Mid-Shore Council on Family Violence serving Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne’s and Talbot counties, revenge porn is another form of emotional abuse. She thinks Cardin’s proposal is a step in the right direction to confronting the evolving forms of emotional abuse brought on by the prevalence of social media.

“I think what I like about this bill is that it’s cutting-edge, and it’s going to help us now address something that’s only going to get more frequent and more abusive as technology expands,” she said in an interview on Friday, Nov. 1.

Yeager said abuse is about power and control, often gained through repeated put-downs, and acts of humiliation and sexual degradation. She said after a relationship is terminated, revenge porn allows someone to continue the cycle of emotional abuse, the hardest form from which to recover.

“It attacks who you see yourself as — in terms of being a mother, in terms of being a woman, in terms of being an employee. Everything is destroyed,” she said.”